This idea that people with intellectual disabilities cannot learn is a very dangerous idea and it leads to us being harmed. I think it is important to autistics with intellectual disabilities that we get the support to learn.
After your loved one receives a diagnosis of Autism, people may bombard you with (possibly unsolicited) advice for next steps. One such step you may actually want to consider is to seek the services of a Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP).
Research indicates that autistic brains exhibit more diversity than non-autistic brains. If autism research is truly going to address the needs of such a varied population, then it needs to branch out similarly, get real about what autistic people need, and humanize its priorities.
Greta Thunberg by Anders Hellberg | Wikimedia Commons [image: Greta Thunberg, a white Swedish teen with long light brown plaits, standing outside a building holding a large hand-painted sign reading, “Skolstrejk för klimatet,” or, “school strike for climate”.] Marie Porter www.CelebrationGeneration.com All of the people who think Greta Thunberg is a “mouthpiece” or “being exploited” have SO OBVIOUSLY
Some organizations say they want to focus on people with intellectual disabilities, but they ignore the self advocacy movement and autistic people with ID like me. We don’t want institutions! We don’t want segregation, we want freedom and autonomy and support in the community! They just need to see what the ID community has been asking for!
These revelations, about presuming competence, human dignity, and the least dangerous assumption—they don’t apply only to kids who are secret geniuses. They apply to everyone. They are the most important for the kids who really do have intellectual disabilities, who really can’t read or use full sentences and who really do need extensive support.
Today’s INSAR 2019 Special Interest Group (SIG) on Gender, Sexuality, and Romantic Relationships was led by Laura Graham Holmes and Jeroen Dewinter, and co-led by Anna van der Miesen. Essentially, relationships and sexuality are central to everyone’s health and well-being. But there isn’t enough useful research and materials available fo autistic people of all ages
When people generally said to be incapable of communication find ways of making clear what they do and don’t want through means other than words, this is self-advocacy.
From its inception, not only did the neurodiversity movement’s values include the most significantly disabled, but those individuals themselves were among our earliest pioneers.
Decades of research shows that people with disabilities living in the community make more choices for ourselves, have a better quality of life, are safer and more included in our communities, live longer, and maintain and develop more skills—and this is true regardless of how disabled a person is or how intense our needs are.
